Before Brewster Academy even played a single game this season, they knew they’d be shorthanded. Bobcats star wing Dwayne Aristode, an Arizona commit and one of the best recruits in the 2025 class, had suffered a season-ending leg injury.
Expectations, at least from the outside, weren’t exactly high for Brewster as it entered its second season in the Nike EYBL Scholastic, the toughest high school basketball league in the country. The Bobcats were ranked in the lower half of the league’s preseason poll, and though they had plenty of talent, they faced an uphill battle without Aristode. They used all of it as fuel.
Head coach Jason Smith has experienced plenty of success in his 25 years leading Brewster, but it’s hard to find a group he was more proud of than this one. The Bobcats overcame any question marks to make noise as one of the best teams in the country. With a 28-5 overall record that included victories over national powerhouses like Montverde Academy, IMG Academy, Long Island Lutheran and Link Academy, Brewster won a share of the EYBL Scholastic regular-season championship, advanced to the semifinals of Chipotle Nationals and finished the winter third in ESPN’s national rankings.
“We certainly took a lot of people by surprise in terms of when word got out that we would be without Dwayne throughout the season,” Smith said. “I think people were surprised. … Everybody in the league, we beat. The guys were motivated by what they perceived to be lack of respect in terms of preseason polls, preseason rankings and some of our guys not necessarily being nationally ranked.”
